Harlem winter

Since we have broken records in the last week, with a coldest temperature recorded at JFK...

...here's a look back at the last three weeks in our immediate Harlem hood.

 127th Street

Until February rolled round winter had been chugging along. Last February was snowy, too.

 Lenox Avenue

But this year, wham bam, we were cold-slammed.

 Lenox Avenue

Even the scaaaaaaary blizzard that made the governor shut down the subway fizzled out, in January. 

Nobody warned us about the next part.

C-c-c-c-c-cold. 

The derelict community garden on our block froze and the snow covered its trash.

 Yes, I have made inquires; no, I have not received answers. GreenThumb is "looking into it."

Even our steps had icicles.

Trees bent with iceweight.

And the flower sellers stayed open, keeping up a steady supply of forced bulbs for me.

The sidewalks are obsessively scraped and then are snowed on or iced over again. 

Wildlife plots its course.

And the stone steps up the rock hill of Marcus Garvey Park are a frozen watercourse.

Most parks have been cleared well, but Marcus Garvey, beautiful in many ways, is also semi-derelict, on these upper levels. The people who come this high are occasional dog walkers, drug users, sex-seekers and purveyors, police (an officer was shot up here last summer), and those who fall in the cracks (...er, me?). So. No salt for us? Maybe they want we should fall and break or heads. Problem solved.
.

Beautiful steps, up the chunk of rock too big to blow up, so that 5th Avenue has to move around it.

And home past old Atlah, whose pastor's habits have returned after an uncharacteristic Christmas time lull.

Yes, well. The nutter is still at it.

And so are we. 

In other ways.